Time Out New York Partners With Start-Up for Online Course Offering

Popularity of “classes” vertical leads to opportunity with CourseHorse.com.

City and regional publication Time Out New York is giving readers access to more information, and not just through its editorial content. Parent company Time Out Group has entered into the local class discovery market—its New York edition has struck a strategic partnership with Internet startup CourseHorse to deliver local educational listings and discounts.

“Everything starts with your audience—you try to continually please, embrace and engage them,” says Tim Boswell, director of transactions for Time Out North America. “In print and online, we’ve always done an annual feature on continuing education and we always see great traffic numbers and engagement with the feature package. This was the next step to that.”

Through its “classes” vertical on Time Out New York‘s site, and through a new co-branded Web portal with CourseHorse, readers have the ability to browse and directly enroll in over 20,000 local class offerings.

Readers can sign up for courses ranging from a windowsill herb gardening class in Brooklyn to an introduction to sailing workshop based out of Manhattan. Classes range in price from free to over $500.

“Classes are almost kind of trendy and cool with our audience at the moment,” says Boswell. “Instead of just going out people are doing classes together. Whether it’s a pastry or fitness class or something with career development, there are a number of options and it’s kind of the thing to do.”

CourseHorse is just over a year old and announced last week that it raised $500,000 in its first round of funding. The site centralizes, curates, and maintains up-to-date class information from over 500 local education providers including universities, non-profits, and small businesses. With options for both adults and kids, classes cover topics ranging from art, cooking, and yoga to finance, marketing and graphic design. Children’s classes are also available, and Boswell says the company will promote these areas to the Time Out New York Kids demographic.

The Time Out Group recently launched the digital- and online-only Time Out Los Angeles and will leverage CourseHorse’s growing presence in that city as well.

“Every time you launch and develop a new category it allows you to reach new people,” adds Boswell. “We’ll look to feature this with some of our marketing partnerships in the future.”